White House “Thrilled” with Report That Its Budget Was Off by $736 Billion

As the fast-moving train wreck that is the Trump administration hurtles toward a multitude of cliffs, it is useful to remember that officials within said train are still attempting to run a functioning government, however poorly. Today, America was treated to yet another example of the administration’s truly remarkable incompetence when the Congressional Budget Office revealed that the White House, once again, had made an enormous, nearly trillion-dollar math error.

In May, economists and other numerate people noted that White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney had proposed offsetting tax cuts and balancing the budget with the same pool of about $2 trillion in savings from slashing the social safety net, a mathematical impossibility that Mulvaney somehow defended. “I’m aware of the criticisms and would simply come back and say there's other places where we were probably overly conservative in our accounting,” he said. “We stand by the numbers.”

Today, the C.B.O. reported that the same White House budget that the administration claimed would result in a $16 billion surplus by 2027 would actually result in a $720 billion deficit. The C.B.O. did note that the plan would cut government spending by $4.2 trillion over the next decade, and, to be fair, that’s a big cut (on the backs of, among others, the poor, the sick, and children). Though, in typical fashion, the White House chose not only to ignore all the other parts of the report but to invent quotes and attribute them to the C.B.O. Per the Washington Post:

The White House seized on this element of the CBO's assessment in its initial response. “We are thrilled that CBO confirms that the President's proposed Budget resulted in the largest deficit reduction they have ever scored,” White House Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman Meghan Burris said. “CBO agrees that this is the largest deficit reduction package in American history. This Administration is committed to making the necessary investments to restore our military, secure our borders, and modernize our infrastructure.”

The CBO did not stipulate in its assessment that the White House's plan would be the “largest deficit reduction package in American history,” as Burris stated. A CBO official said later that it did not do a historical analysis of the White House's plan. Many Democrats and Republicans often cite the budget deal cut between the Clinton administration and Republicans in Congress as being the largest in recent decades, in part because it eliminated the deficit and created a budget surplus.

Incidentally, that’s the same C.B.O. that the O.M.B. director said last month should be dissolved.

In related news, during a Senate hearing on Thursday, Fed chair Janet Yellen was asked by Senator Bob Corker if she thought the administration’s claim it will achieve 3 percent economic growth through a combination of tax reform, deregulation, and infrastructure spending was realistic. Her answer was a delightful example of grandmotherly bemusement and playing along to be nice that we assume she uses with first graders who visit the Federal Reserve and tell her they’ve got a plan to turn the $10 they got for their birthdays into $10 million dollars in short order.

“It’s something that would be wonderful if you can accomplish it—I’d love to see it,” she told Corker. “It would be quite challenging.”

Yellen, of course, joins a long line of people who think the White House’s 3-percent-a-year prediction is a fantasy, apparently having been unmoved by Mulvaney’s Wednesday op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he laid out the administration’s plan for achieving what he called, wait for it, “MAGAnomics.”

Fed chair: rolling back financial regulations wouldn’t be that great an idea

During her testimony, Yellen also clarified a statement she made two weeks ago in London, when she said that there probably wouldn’t be another financial crisis in “our lifetime.” That statement, she noted, was dependent on keeping the rules put in place in the wake of the last crisis, lest anyone in the Trump administration think it’s totally fine to start hacking away at them without repercussions. “What I should have stated originally when I made that comment, I believe we have done a great deal since the financial crisis to strengthen the system and to make it more resilient,” Yellen told Senator Sherrod Brown. “It’s important that we maintain the improvements that have been put in place that mitigate the risk and the potential damage.”

Team Trump is keen to get rid many of the Obama-era restrictions put in place in the wake of the financial crisis in order to prevent another one. Last month, the Treasury released a 150-page report calling for loosening or scrapping more than 100 financial rules.

Area man still clinging to dream of tax reform getting done this year

Despite the fact that the Trump administration, which promised to repeal and replace Obamacare on “day one,” has been unable to repeal or replace the Affordable Care Act, or pass any meaningful legislation whatsoever, or go one single day without distracting bad press like Trump’s son lying about his meetings with Russians or Trump’s lawyer sending a series of unhinged e-mails to a stranger, one analyst is still holding onto the dream like a kid who insists his parents really are going to get back together one day.

“We think taxes are different than health care. We think there are lessons learned from health care. It's not easy,” policy research strategist Daniel Cliftontold CNBC. “The Russia story has made it harder to do, but we're confident the fourth quarter is going to be very focused on tax reform, with completion in the first quarter. There’s a lot of progress being made on tax reform, and it's all being done behind the scenes. They're trying to work out the thornier issues of tax reform so they avoid the problems they're having on health care.”

Goldman Sachs hopes to lure tech talent with jeans and sneakers

In the post-financial crisis era, banks have had to grapple with both 1) no longer being able to attract would-be employees by dumping gigantic piles of money in their laps and saying “there‘s more where that came from” and 2) having to compete with tech firms like Google and Uber, with their beanbag chairs and their ping-pong tables, and their claim that they “care” about their staff. While Goldman Sachs isn’t yet prepared to swap out its conference tables for those of the foosball variety, it is taking the huge step of allowing employees in its tech division to forgo the uniform of dress pants, a button-down, and fleece vest that is required in financial services, presumably under penalty of death. Per Reuters:

The fifth-largest U.S. bank by assets told employees in its technology division to “exercise judgment in determining when to adapt to business attire,” according to an internal memo from late June seen by Reuters on Thursday. It did not specify whether hoodies or sneakers, the ad-hoc uniform of millennial tech workers, constitute acceptable dress.

Trump: we need to put solar panels on The Wall so people don’t get hit in the head with bags of drugs

Last month, at the same rally in which he explained why he doesn’t want poor people in charge of the economy, Donald Trump floated the idea—which he claimed to have invented but actually didn’t—that the wall on the border of Mexico he so desperately wants to build be “a solar wall, so it creates energy and pays for itself.” Today in France, he doubled down on the plan, responding to a pool reporter who asked “You were joking about solar, right?” with this strange collection of words:

“No, not joking, no. There is a chance that we can do a solar wall. We have major companies looking at that. Look, there's no better place for solar than the Mexico border—the southern border. And there is a very good chance we can do a solar wall, which would actually look good. But there is a very good chance we could do a solar wall. One of the things with the wall is you need transparency. You have to be able to see through it. In other words, if you can't see through that wall—so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what's on the other side of the wall. And I'll give you an example. As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don't see them—they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It's over. As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.”

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